Here are just a few tips to help you but it doesn't guaranty that you will win!
There are so many photo contests that sometimes it is difficult to know exactly what to do. We will try to give you a few advices.
Choose the contest that is right for you:
Even if it seems obvious, don't participate in all the contests you can find on the internet. Select them carefully. For instance, choose the good subject. The theme of the contest has to be relevant with your body of work. Try one's luck in a contest were you can send images that match the subject. Also, check the level of difficulty. If you are an amateur keep in mind that you will have less chance to win a professional contest. Of course you can try but just try to remain realist in your expectations.
Carefully read the rules and regulations:
Some photographers tend to forget to read the rules and regulations but it is very important. You need to know what you are allowed to do or not, check out the rules about copyright if you don't want to have a nasty surprise. In some cases you will see your work in catalogs without you knowing about it. Be also very cautious with entry fees. Some contests are very expensive but it doesn't mean that it is more reliable or serious than a free contest.
How is your image judged?
Sometimes by vote, sometimes by a jury and sometimes both when there are several stages. In the contests were the public vote it is often the photographers who have more friends who win. You's better be a good salesman than a good photographer. I would recommend to avoid these types of contests unless you think you have a really good chance. I prefer the contests where professionals judge your work. First of all because it is the best challenge there is. If a panel of jurors like your work you can be proud. It is sometimes a good idea to try to find who are the judges so that you can try to find what type of work they like. It can help you choose an image over another if you feel it is more likely to be liked by that juror.
The choice of the image:
There is no miracle recipe but pay attention to a few things.
*Check out the previous winners it can give you an idea of what the judges are looking for. *Keep in mind the theme of the contest. if your image is just slightly relevant to the theme you have less chance to win. *If you are submitting a portfolio make sure that the images tell a story or that there is a real link between them. In other words don't send images that don't go well together. *Be original. Competition is hard and a jury will be more likely to notice your work if it is a little different than others. *If you want to participate in a specific contest but you don't have in your stock an image that would fit, don't hesitate to create one. It is a good challenge and the chosen theme might inspire you in a new way. *If it is a contest with votes, submit your images as soon as possible. The earlier the better. If the contest is judged, no rush! Take time to choose wisely. *Prepare clean files or prints. Read carefully what the guidelines. Check out if your image is going to be printed on paper or judged on a screen.
An expanded chronology charting Todd Hido's career, with ten years of new work.
Well known for his photography of landscapes and suburban housing, and for his use of detail and luminous color, acclaimed American photographer Todd Hido casts a distinctly cinematic eye across all that he photographs, digging deep into his memory and imagination for inspiration. Newly revised and expanded, Intimate Distance: Over Thirty Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album includes ten years of new work since the book's first publication, including breathtaking new images from his travels to Iceland, Norway, and Japan, where he brings both a familiar eye and an expansive new vision.
Though Hido has published many smaller monographs of individual bodies of work, this gathers his most iconic images, along with many unpublished works to provide the most complete and comprehensive monograph charting his career. The book is organized chronologically, showing how his series overlap in exciting ways. David Campany introduces the work and looks at the kind of cinematic spectatorship the work demands. And Katya Tylevich muses on the making of each of Hido's major monographs, "The photographs lead as far as human-made roads go. They reach the periphery of utility wires, footprints, and paths already taken." From exterior to interior, surface observations to subconscious investigations, from landscapes to nudes, from America and beyond, this midcareer collection reveals how his unique focus has developed and shifted over time, yet the tension between distance and intimacy remains.
The fourth chapter of the celebrated series The Day May Break by the renowned photographer Nick Brandt, featuring Syrian refugee families, displaced by climate change in water-scarce Jordan
This is the fourth chapter of The Day May Break, photographer Nick Brandt's global series portraying people and animals impacted by climate change and environmental degradation. The series was photographed in Jordan, one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. It features rural Syrian refugee families currently living there, whose lives have been seriously impacted by droughts intensified by climate change. Living lives of continuous displacement, they are forced to move their homes up to several times a year, moving to where there is available agricultural work, to wherever there has been sufficient rainfall to enable crops to grow. The photographs show the families' connection and strength in the face of adversity, that when all else is lost you still have each other. The boxes on which the families gather aim skyward, pedestals for those in our society that are typically unseen and unheard.
Photographer Ed Kashi’s passion is long-term documentary projects that immerse him in issues that need attention or people’s lives whose struggles warrant concern. He has had a lengthy and varied career with National Geographic and other major magazines, traveling around the world to tell visual stories.
Kashi’s archive, now housed at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, houses many of his personal memories and the experiences attached to the creation of those images. More than a simple repository of images, the archive is a growing, thriving, and continually evolving organism, a living library with immense value.
Through his photography, Kashi has had an intimate, front-row seat to witness and record major events in history. His work has been a passport to worlds unseen, unveiling issues that need illumination, documenting history in the making, and capturing the human experience and the many awe-inspiring places in our fragile world. A Period in Time is a testimony to some of Kashi’s most memorable stories—people he has been privileged to observe and learn from and the places and narratives that have shaped his life, all captured one moment at a time.
Nearly four decades of unpublished works from a master of documentary photography
Consisting solely of previously unpublished photographs, The Way Back is a deep dive through Bruce Davidson’s more than 60-year career. The book chronologically presents photos made between 1957 and 1992, showcasing Davidson’s exceptional versatility―from his earliest assignments to later seminal bodies of work including his yearlong study of teenage members of a Brooklyn Gang (1959), his extensive coverage of the American Civil Rights Movement in Time of Change (1961–65) and his breakthrough portraits of the residents of a single block in Harlem in East 100th Street (1966–68). Series such as Subway (1980) and Central Park (1992) confirm Davidson as a quintessential chronicler of New York City.
What emerges through this retrospective is Davidson’s overt sensibility and empathy for his subjects and his commitment to documenting them in depth over time. Unlike his peers who photographed historical events, Davidson focused on the people within these histories. Now, drawing near the end of his long career, Davidson offers this book as a parting look at his artistic passage, an elegiac goodbye as well as a requiem.
Bruce Davidson (born 1933, Oak Park, IL) became a member of the Magnum Photos agency in 1958; since then his photographs and photo series have been widely published to great acclaim. At Yale University, he studied under photographer Alexey Brodovitch and artist Josef Albers, the latter of whom encouraged him to pursue his work among marginalized people and communities. His artistic influences include Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
